Matt: Oh, OK.

Jim: But, they didn’t break. Every other tool we had broke. Like when I did Takaka Falls with one of the two Burgess twins. What’s Adrian’s brother?

Matt: Al

Jim: Al, yeah. I still can’t remember which one is which. I think I climbed with Adrian. Anyway, the Calgary one, which you always felt like you were just about to go to jail. He and I did Takaka Falls.

Matt: It’s good to know people like that.

Jim: Yeah, we were skiing past the hut with all the big locks on it. And he goes over tapping on the door with his ice ax, you know seeing if we could break in. I said, I think we should just keep going. Anyway, he and I did Takaka Falls, second or third ascent or something. It was 40 below. I broke three tools on the climb. We had borrowed every ice tool we could find in Calgary and we had them all with us, and we just broke them. But, after you’d finally broken everything else, the one tool you always had that left was the pterodactyl, the Joe Brown tool — the Brits, you know from Scotland. And it just beat the shit out of your hands, but it didn’t break. 

Matt: It didn’t break, it was trusty?

Jim: It was trusty, and it had a real steep pick on it. It was actually a good mix tool. And Forrest made a hammer, which I still have — a fiberglass hammer that had a steep pick. So I had a steep pick, hammer, short, and then an ice axe. Not a 70, you know, we shortened them.

Matt: What was your technique using these two kind of tools? Were you switching hands with them?

Jim: No, ice axe is always in your left hand, and the hammer is always in your right. That’s what we did. 

Matt: I guess it was so steep too to switch around in any way.

Jim: No, and we had wrist loops that were half-inch webbing. So, basically you would tie at least a half-inch webbing into the head of the tool and then tie it to the right size to be a wrist loop. So, you had half-inch webbing, wrist loop, and, you know, gloves or not gloves. And then the hammer was in your right hand cause we had pins. So you got to put in pins. And we had holsters, so you could holster both tools and free climb. Now, we ice climbed a lot — in those days, we climbed ice a lot with no tools.

Matt: You guys would freeze your gloves?

Jim: Yeah, you’d use wool gloves. 

Matt: Yeah Jeff Lowe was telling me about that. You’d get them wet?

Jim: And it was a cool thing. Jeff and Duncan were always into the, could you climb this with no tools? 

Matt: So, did you do some of that style climbing on this pitch, or were you strictly on tools?

Jim: No, I was doing both. I was actually climbing barehanded in places. There were places where I was cleaning off holds, and cleaning them the best I could and using them as a hand hold.